DAME GERTRUDE MORE, O.S.B.



Helen More (1606-1633), Foundress, Thomas More's great great granddaughter, was born 25 March, 1606, in Low Leyton, Essex. Her mother died young, her father, Cresacre, taking over her education. Benet Jones, O.S.B., urged the family to consider her for a monastic vocation. The English Benedictine Congregation had been refounded in 1619, following its Dissolutions under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and now sought to start a house of nuns in exile from England, to support the monks'  hazardous work on the English Mission, through their prayer. Helen was seventeen, with misgivings, but she left England with two More cousins and four other young Englishwomen to Douai, where they were joined by Catherine Gascoigne. They founded Our Lady of Comfort at Cambrai (today Stanbrook Abbey). Helen was Clothed, 31 December 1623, and Professed her Vows, 1 January 1625, taking the name of Gertrude from the mystic Gertrude of Helfta. Contemporary prayer practices were Ignatian. Dame Gertrude More found these troubling. She also rebelled against the contemplative practices of medieval mystics, many of them women, taught the nuns by Augustine Baker, O.S.B., from 1624-33. Trained as an Anglican lawyer, he had converted to Catholicism and worked amongst the manuscripts owned by Sir Robert Cotton. Baker encouraged forms of prayer from the Desert Fathers, Benedict, and the later mystics, and he encouraged the English nuns to copy out and themselves write contemplative books. `Good books' he said to the nuns, `are a necessary good to your soul'. He taught the nuns above all to heed their Call from God, to live their Vocation. At first the restless and doubting Dame Gertrude More adamantly opposed these practices, while Dame Catherine Gascoigne quietly adopted them. Finally Dame Gertrude confronted Dom Augustine, who commented, `What she needed was to be brought into a simplicity of soul which is the immediate disposition to union with God, and that can be done only by the Divine working with the soul's co-operation, aided by Divine grace'. He had her live her `way of love', laying down scruples and becoming internally obedient. She expressed it as 'Consider your call, That's all in all'. Concerning her past scruples she laughingly quoted her ancestor, Thomas More, `The urchin wench goes whining up and down as if nothing she did or could do did please [God]'.
Her writings, discovered after her early death in 1633, included the `Confessio Amantis', (published, Paris, 1658, by Serenus Cressy, O.S.B.), based on Augustine's Confessions interwoven into the Divine Office, the `Fragments' and the `Apology', the last defending Baker's teachings, which describes the quieting effect of prayer in loving God and humbling herself, and in which she appreciates his non-authoritarian approach, that God is the authority, not the confessor or director. Dame Gertrude being too young for Abbess, though Foundress, Dame Catherine Gascoigne was selected, Gertrude being cellarer and overseeing the lay sisters. In this year her younger sister Bridget More also joined the community, as did Catherine's sister, Margaret Gascoigne. Chaplain Francis Hull opposed Dom Augustine's teachings, and caused turmoil in the community in 1633. Dame Gertrude encouraged the sisters but herself fell ill with smallpox in the midst of the row, both Hull and Baker being recalled to Douai. She died serenely in the presence of her cousin Dame Ann More, 17 August. She was 27 years old.
Augustine Baker, O.S.B., wrote The Inner Life of Dame Gertrude More, demonstrating his teaching on prayer, and edited her writings, dying in England in 1641.

Julia Bolton Holloway


Augustine Baker, O.S.B., Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B., and Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in English and Foreign Libraries from the Works and Life of Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B. and Other Documents Relating to the English Benedictines, ed. Justin McCann and Hugh Connolly, Catholic Record Society 55 (1933)
______________________. Sancta Sophia or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, &c. Extracted out of More than XL. Treatises written by the late Ven. Father F. Augustin Baker, A Monke of the English Congregation of the Order of St Benedict: and methodically digested by the R.F. Serenus Cressy of the Same Order & Congregation And printed at the Charges of his Convent of S. Gregories in Doway (Douai, 1657)
The Benedictines of Stanbrook, `Cambrai: Dame Catherine Gascoigne. 1600-1676', In A Great Tradition: Tribute to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook (1956), 3-29.
The Cloud of Unknowing And Other Treatises by an English Mystic of the Fourteenth Century. With a Commentary by Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B., ed. Dom Justin McCann (London, 1924/1943)
Jeremy Hall, O.S.B., `Dame Gertrude More (1606-1633): The Living Tradition', Medieval Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings, ed. Miriam Schmitt, Linda Kulzer (Collegeville, 1996)                                           
Dorothy Latz, 'Glow-worm light': Writings of Seventeenth Century English Recusant Women from Original Manuscripts. (Salzburg, 1989.)
Dame Agnes More, The Building of Divine Love, ed. Dorothy Latz (Salzburg, 1992)
Dame Gertrude More, The Holy Practices of a Devine Lover or the Sainctly Ideots Devotions, ed. Augustine Baker, O.S.B. [Serenus Cressy, O.S.B.] (Paris, 1657)
__________________, The Inner Life of Dame Gertrude More, ed. Augustine Baker, O.S.B. [Serenus Cressy, O.S.B.], Dom Weld-Blundell, O.S.B. (London, 1910)                                             
__________________, The Spiritual Exercises of the most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More of the Holy Order of S. Bennet and English Congregation of Our Ladies of Comfort of Cambrai. She called them Amore ordinem nescit and Ideots Devotions. Her only Spiritual Father and Director the Ven. Fr. Baker stiled them Confesiones Amantis, A Lovers Confressions, ed. Augustine Baker, O.S.B. [Serenus Cressy, O.S.B.] (Paris. 1658) Dedication: `The R. Mother Bridget More of Saint Peter and Saint Paul most worthy Prioress of the English Benedictin Nunns of our Lady of Hope in Paris'.
__________________, The Writings of Dame Gertrude More, ed. Augustine Baker. O.S.B., Dom Benedict Weld-Blundell (London, 1910)
Records of the Abbey of Our Lady of Consolation at Cambrai 1620-1793, ed. Dame Cecilia Heywood, O.S.B., Joseph Gillow, Catholic Record Society Publications 13 (1913), 1-85.
Dame Frideswide Sandeman, `Dame Gertrude More', Benedict's Disciples, ed. David Hugh Farmer (Leominster, 1980), 263-281.
Hywel Wyn Owen and Luke Bell, O.S.B. `The Upholland Anthology: An Augustine Baker Manuscript'. The Downside Review 107: 369 (1989), 274-92.
Fr. Peter Salvin and Fr. Serenus Cressy. The Life of Father Augustin Baker, O.S.B. (1575-1641). Ed. Dom Justin McCann, O.S.B. London, 1933.
Placid Spearitt, O.S.B., `The Survival of Medieval Spirituality Among the Exiled Black Monks', American Benedictine Review 25 (1974), 187-309.                                           

Manuscripts at Cambrai, Mediathèque Municipale; Lille, Archives du Nord; Paris, Bibliothèegque Mazarin; Ampleforth Abbey; Colwich, St Mary's Abbey; Downside Abbey; Stanbrook Abbey; British Library, Cotton Julius C.III, fol. 12, Augustine Baker's letter to Sir Robert Cotton requesting medieval contemplative manuscripts in Middle English for the Cambrai nuns `They are enclosed and never seen by us . . . their lives being contemplative', dated Cambrai, 3 June 1629.

Portraits survive of Dames Gertrude More (engraving, frontispiece to The Spiritual Exercises of the most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More . . . . (Paris, 1658); Catherine Gascoigne (engraving, reproduced Catholic Record Society 13); Bridget More (pencil drawing, Colwich); and Barbara Constable (oil painting in Constable family, reproduced Catholic Record Society 13; as well as an engraving of Dom Augustine Baker prefacing Sancta Sophia, (Douai, 1657).

Saint Bride and Her Book: Birgitta of Sweden's Revelations Translated from Latin and Middle English with Introduction, Notes and Interpretative Essay. Focus Library of Medieval Women. Series Editor, Jane Chance. xv + 164 pp. Revised, republished,  Boydell and Brewer, 1997. Republished, Boydell and Brewer, 2000. ISBN 0-941051-18-8

To see an example of a page inside with parallel text in Middle English and Modern English, variants and explanatory notes, click here. Index to this book at http://www.umilta.net/julsismelindex.html

Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation. Edited. Sister Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P. and Julia Bolton Holloway. Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo (Click on British flag, enter 'Julian of Norwich' in search box), 2001. Biblioteche e Archivi 8. XIV + 848 pp. ISBN 88-8450-095-8.

To see inside this book, where God's words are in red, Julian's in black, her editor's in grey, click here. 

Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love. Translated, Julia Bolton Holloway. Collegeville: Liturgical Press; London; Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003. Amazon ISBN 0-8146-5169-0/ ISBN 023252503X. xxxiv + 133 pp. Index.

 
'Colections' by an English Nun in Exile: Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202. Ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family. Analecta Cartusiana 119:26. Eds. James Hogg, Alain Girard, Daniel Le Blévec. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2006.

Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton OSB. Analecta Cartusiana 35:20 Spiritualität Heute und Gestern. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2008. ISBN 978-3-902649-01-0. ix + 399 pp. Index. Plates.

Teresa Morris. Julian of Norwich: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Handbook. Preface, Julia Bolton Holloway. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010. x + 310 pp.  ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-3678-7; ISBN-10: 0-7734-3678-2. Maps. Index.

Fr Brendan Pelphrey. Lo, How I Love Thee: Divine Love in Julian of Norwich. Ed. Julia Bolton Holloway. Amazon, 2013. ISBN 978-1470198299

 

Julian among the Books: Julian of Norwich's Theological Library. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. xxi + 328 pp. VII Plates, 59 Figures. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8894-X, ISBN (13) 978-1-4438-8894-3.

Mary's Dowry; An Anthology of Pilgrim and Contemplative Writings/ La Dote di Maria:Antologie di Testi di Pellegrine e Contemplativi. Traduzione di Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotto. Testo a fronte, inglese/italiano. Analecta Cartusiana 35:21 Spiritualität Heute und Gestern. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2017. ISBN 978-3-903185-07-4. ix + 484 pp.

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